As I mentioned in my previous post, researchers have not reached a unified consensus on the fundamental causes of the problems of declining marriage rates, falling birthrates, and sexlessness. However, from the perspective of utopian thought, which seeks human happiness through love, these are issues that must be resolved as a matter of highest priority. Among these problems, I will summarize the fundamental causes of declining marriage rates and birthrates. The root cause of both is the growing advantage of women, against a background of technological development and urbanization.
The Origins of Marriage
Until approximately 150 years ago, marriage was a means of survival for women, and choosing not to marry was not a realistic option. As for where the institution of marriage originated, it arose from the beginnings of agriculture and the accumulation of property. During the hunter-gatherer era, there was no accumulated property. People lived by hunting animals and gathering plants and fruit, which required constant movement. As a result, they could not possess substantial property. However, with the beginning of agriculture, it became possible to accumulate property. Agriculture meant settling in a particular place and investing in that land: cutting down trees, removing stones, and constructing irrigation channels. The farmland created through these efforts became property. Once people settled, they were also able to accumulate grain, tools, livestock, and other goods. This created the need to protect the land and property that people had developed and accumulated. Conflicts in the medieval period were largely struggles over control of land, and these were primarily the responsibility of men. Women had little role in conflicts involving spears and swords. For this reason, farmland and accumulated property came to be regarded as men’s property. The next issue was inheritance. Men wanted to pass their property on to their own children. But in an age without DNA testing, only the mother could be certain of a child’s biological father. This was one of the reasons the institution of marriage emerged. Men who were not involved in raising children, such as certain aristocratic men in the Heian period of Japan or Mosuo men, did not care whom a woman slept with. However, men who owned property and participated in raising children would not tolerate a woman’s infidelity resulting in her becoming pregnant by another man. This is where the notion of female chastity originated. Because men were the ones who developed, protected, and owned the land, women could access land and property only by marrying men. Consequently, for medieval women, choosing not to marry was not a realistic option.
Women’s Independence and Urbanization
The development of technology brought about a revolution in women’s ways of life. First, the Haber–Bosch process caused agricultural production to increase dramatically. The development of railways and automobiles made it possible to transport food from rural areas to cities. The invention of the refrigerator also made it possible to store food in urban areas. Agriculture ties people to the land. However, technological developments freed people from that constraint and made it possible for them to live in cities. As industry became more advanced, more jobs became available in urban areas, and women also gained the opportunity to find employment there. For medieval women, who were tied to the land, marriage was a means of survival. Modern women, by contrast, can live in cities, obtain employment, and choose to live without marrying. Until approximately 150 years ago, around 90 percent of the population in developed countries lived in rural areas. Over the past 150 years, this ratio has been reversed, and today approximately 90 percent of the population lives in urban areas. Urbanization and the expansion of women’s rights are closely connected. The most important factor in expanding women’s rights was not the feminist movement but the advancement of technology.
How the Purpose of Marriage Has Changed for Women
As women’s ways of life have changed, so too has the purpose of marriage for women. The strength of their motivation has changed, as has the level of satisfaction they seek. In addition, the power to choose a spouse has shifted from men to women. Now that women are economically and socially independent, the purpose of marriage for women is no longer based on the desire for survival. Instead, the goal is a higher-quality life—in other words, happiness. At first glance, this appears to be an ideal change. However, it also creates problems, because people have different standards for happiness. One woman may regard an economically affluent lifestyle as happiness. Another may consider being loved by a man to be the essence of happiness. Even when it comes to economic prosperity, how much wealth is it reasonable to seek? In reality, most women do not understand what they themselves are looking for. Nevertheless, they enter the dating market in that state. It is like setting out on a journey without a map.
Women’s Preference for Hypergamy
There is a term called “hypergamy.” Generally speaking, women tend to want to marry men who are above them in terms of family background, education, income, or other forms of social status. This upward-oriented preference is very strong. Some women decide that remaining unmarried would be preferable to marrying a man from a lower social class than themselves. In general, people tend to overestimate themselves. For example, 80 percent of drivers believe that they are good drivers. There is also the Dunning–Kruger effect, in which people with lower ability tend to overestimate themselves. Both men and women tend to evaluate themselves highly, but in romantic relationships, women are more likely to have an inflated self-assessment. According to a survey conducted by one dating-app company, men evaluated women’s appearances relatively objectively, whereas women reportedly judged approximately 80 percent of men as having below-average looks. Unmarried women in Japan around the age of 30 reportedly seek prospective husbands with annual incomes of approximately 5 to 6 million yen. However, among unmarried men in the same age group, only around 6 to 8 percent earn that much. I do not regard women’s high self-evaluation as a malfunction of the brain. High expectations can also be described as ambition. It is fine for both women and men to aim high at first. Although people may initially set their expectations too high, it is natural to adjust those expectations through several romantic experiences and eventually find a partner of comparable status. The problem is that this adjustment is more difficult for women. This is because women occupy a stronger position in the dating market, and the more women date, the more their high expectations tend to be reinforced.
Why High Expectations Persist
Women receive approaches from large numbers of men on dating apps. One survey found that 54 percent of women had at some point felt overwhelmed by the number of messages they received. Conversely, 64 percent of men reportedly lost confidence because they received too few messages. As a result, women’s high expectations tend to persist for some time on dating apps. The same is true of dating and romantic relationships. This is because women tend to date only men who are above them or of comparable status, whereas men can date women above them, at the same level, or below them—in other words, women across the entire spectrum. Highly successful men in the romantic marketplace are sometimes called “alpha males.” If there is one alpha male for every 50 men, he belongs to the top 2 percent. The behavior of these alpha males is problematic in relation to women’s high expectations, because they give women dreams that cannot realistically be fulfilled. Alpha males do not necessarily date only high-status women. In fact, during the period in which they are dating, alpha males often avoid demanding, high-status women. Instead, they enjoy casual relationships with numerous women. I call this “serial polygamy.” This serial polygamy does not necessarily stop at four or five women. According to one survey, the top 1 percent of men have dated more than 100 women over the course of their lives. In other words, it is possible that a single alpha male causes 100 women to fail to adjust their excessively high expectations.
The Age-35 Barrier
I have explained that women tend to prefer hypergamy and that it is difficult for them to adjust their high expectations. While carrying this disadvantage, women also face another decisive disadvantage: the “age-35 barrier.” Because women’s sex hormones decrease by half between the ages of 35 and 40, becoming pregnant becomes more difficult after the age of 35. This fact is also reflected in marriage rates. Statistical data likewise indicate that women over 35 have greater difficulty getting married. Considering the age-35 barrier in relation to declining birthrates, a woman would need to be married by the age of 32 in order to give birth to two children by the age of 35. If women begin dating at the age of 16—the age of sexual consent in Japan—there are 16 years between the ages of 16 and 32. In order to have children, women must meet a man who can make them happy while adjusting their high expectations during this 16-year period. However, this is not easy. And it is precisely because it is not easy that the trend toward declining marriage rates and birthrates continues unabated.
Problems on the Men’s Side
So far, I have explained the difficulties women face in seeking marriage. What about men? While women continue searching for their ideal marriage partners, men tend to give up on marriage at an early stage. Men who recognize themselves as belonging to the lower ranks of the romantic hierarchy fear having their self-esteem damaged by romantic competition. They give up on marriage early and immerse themselves in anime and video games. In Japan, a considerable number of men became “otaku” beginning in the 1980s. The Wikipedia entry for “otaku” states that the term refers to an enthusiast or fan and became widely used through Japanese subculture in the 1980s. However, this is the result of otaku desperately concealing their true nature. The essence of an otaku is not simply being an enthusiast. Rather, an otaku is a man who gives up on real-world romance early in life and pursues romance in a world of fantasy. Many people believe that human beings are capable of romantic relationships instinctively. This is a major misconception. In human history, modern romantic relationships between men and women are a relatively new behavioral pattern, and they require sophisticated communication skills. For a man who escapes into a world of fantasy early in life, returning to the real world and taking the lead in relationships with women is difficult. As a result, many men fall into the category of socially disadvantaged men at an early stage of their lives.
Reconsidering the Premises
Having examined the origins of marriage, I have summarized the fundamental causes of declining marriage rates and birthrates. I intend to consider how these problems might be solved in a future discussion. However, if the basis of marriage was originally the protection of land for agricultural purposes, together with the need for a man protecting that land to establish the paternity of his children, then the original basis for marriage no longer exists today. Ninety percent of the population now lives in urban areas, and anyone can identify a child’s biological father through DNA testing. Therefore, rather than treating unmarried people as a problem based on the traditional institution of monogamous marriage, we should consider a new form of marriage. We should also consider having children without assuming monogamous marriage or the nuclear family as the necessary framework. In particular, the number of children with developmental disorders is currently increasing explosively. The cause is a lack of attachment and excessive parental interference—in other words, the nuclear family. We should acknowledge that the nuclear family has failed and consider raising children through extended families, as people did in the past. In this sense as well, utopian thought is correct.
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